


Posthumous

by Ixchel_Anima



Category: SOMA (Video Game)
Genre: All the usual WAU goodness, Body Dysphoria, Body Horror, Canonical Character Death, Gore, Ross has a very bad day, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:48:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27263746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ixchel_Anima/pseuds/Ixchel_Anima
Summary: Adjective: Arising, occurring, or continuing after one's death.Ross is spat out somewhere outside Alpha, still alive. He realizes very quickly that his work isn't yet over.
Relationships: Simon Jarret & Johan Ross
Comments: 23
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

The Leviathan spat Ross out just outside his old workstation.

He regained consciousness in total darkness. His awareness bled back in a series of steady, electromagnetic pulses, bouncing off of rocks and old Carthage structures like radar, the bases illuminated and bright with electricity in the otherwise stygian blackness of the abyss.

And then there was pain.

It had blossomed anew, and in places it hadn't been before - no longer content being just the background radiation that had characterized life since his revival, it now demanded his attention.

He drifted in and out. Globs of structure gel swirled in the surrounding water. Something had ruptured - it felt like bleeding. _How could this feel like bleeding?_

It was hard to pinpoint where exactly the feeling began and where it ended, Ross’ nerves so thoroughly fried by this point that the cold of the ocean barely registered on his skin. It was vague, and excruciating, and everywhere at once. 

The events previous dripped back in short vignettes.

_The diving suit. Glass shattering._

_Climber, Abyss. Tau._

Ross had seen his colleagues there, dead but breathing. Rendered immobile, zombie-like. Trapped.

He remembered the WAU.

_Fuck._

The thought was enough to encourage Ross into a sitting position. The water around him shifted, dense and crushing, like moving through honey; what he imagined moving through honey would be like.

His body shuddered with an electric jolt. The cause of the structure gel leakage was now painfully clear - the Leviathan's beak had shredded his abdomen, leaving a gaping window of wires and guts around his stomach that only widened as he moved. Ross could feel the structure gel writhe and jerk with each EM pulse and the sensation made him delirious with a fresh panic, the sight alarming enough that he couldn’t stop the scream from rising in his throat; a horrible, gurgling sound that was swallowed up by the tubing and pipes that had replaced his windpipe.

Thick metallic cables hung twisted and shredded, slick with blood - _he still had blood_ \- and blackened as if dipped in tar. Forming and reforming - deliberate. There was a sting like static echoing in the surrounding abyss, as powerful and overwhelming as it had been during his isolation in Omicron.

The WAU was trying to save his life. 

Ross realized, with dawning horror, that he had failed.

It was like he’d been carved out and left hollow. A cold dread sunk into his shoulders and then settled there as he began to understand what that truly meant. He could feel his insides put themselves back into place as if it was happening to someone else, the sensation so detached and foreign that even the revulsion he felt didn’t quite belong to him anymore.

The WAU would _continue_ to try and save his life, and the lives of everyone else. Over and over. It would never stop, _never stop_ -

Whatever tether had been holding him down before had snapped, leaving Ross grasping around in the dark for a way to remember how to keep existing like this. His chest heaved with phantom breaths, entire body trembling as the weight of the last few months came crashing down all at once. It was like someone had closed their hands around his neck and squeezed until they crushed the life out of him. He tried to scream, force out the air trapped in his lungs, but couldn’t. He hated being so self-aware - knowing exactly what was happening, and being powerless to do anything about it.

His hands gripped into the soft silt beneath him. Ross tried again to breathe. _One, Two._

It was a parody of all the breathing exercises he’d ever read about, listening to his own, stuttering breath as it swirled around where he assumed his lungs might still be. The sound he heard was inhuman. Too empty and mechanical to have possibly come from him. Maybe if he did this long enough his body would forget they were underwater, airless, and in a body that no longer needed oxygen to live.

And yet, whatever he was doing was working.

Time blurred. The writhing eventually stopped - gel hardened over the wounds like scabs. 

Despite everything, the pain eased.

Ross felt almost in control again, the ocean floor returning to clarity in a stark, precise focus.

He was completely and utterly _fucked._

Ross took a breath he didn't need as he rose shakily to his feet, faintly aware of the vicious claw marks in the sea floor where his hands had just been. 

_God_ , he needed to get out of here.

Ross dragged himself forward. The pace was agonizing, but thankfully it didn't take long to orient himself again. Hobbling around the perimeter of Alpha, the WAU's presence was still an oppressive one, immense and suffocating. His skin felt like it had been enveloped in static, everything somehow numb and aching and _charged_ all at once. 

Everything had happened so quickly before; he couldn’t quite figure out where it had gone wrong. After months of torturous wait things had finally fallen into place, and then came undone just as fast. He hadn’t accounted for the fact that even after seeing everything the WAU had corrupted, the suffering it caused, Simon would refuse to help him.

His thoughts returned to Simon - a legacy scan in a diving suit, of all the things the WAU could've dredged up. Ross had no doubt that the little bugger got away. 

And with no electronics to raid for the date or time, it was impossible to know how long it had been since he’d last seen him. Assuming he hadn’t been eaten too, he could be anywhere.

Simon might've even launched the ARK by now.

More importantly: he might still be alive.

The thought energized Ross with a new sense of purpose.

With Tau thoroughly infested with WAU's creatures - _his colleagues_ \- and the climber only recallable from Omicron, there was really only one place Simon could feasibly be.

Back when PATHOS-II was functional, Ross could cut from his quarters in Tau to Alpha in less than half an hour - and further to Phi in about the same, if he'd ever wanted to. Lucky enough to have Alpha to himself, his schedule was fairly loose, and he was quick to take advantage of the peace and solitude of the abyss whenever the chance arose - oxygen permitting. He’d got to know the area around the station well.

It dawned on him very quickly that he’d been spat out into a rather unhelpful spot. Alpha sat among a dense nest of rocky seabed that made it both hard to spot and hard to scale. Though the structure was decayed enough that he could slip through regardless of where he entered from, after everything the prospect was incredibly unappealing.

That… _Thing_ , whatever it was. It had come from beneath him. He had no plans to encounter it again.

Ross started the long way around. The lack of sea life, WAU infested or otherwise, was a relief. All things considered, he was lucky that his trips in this form had been largely unhindered. He wasn't sure if it was luck, or the sting of electro-magnetism, or even the light radiating from his new body that was keeping them away. The smaller ones, anyway.

Glasser told him once how deep sea fish could use bioluminescence to deter predators - or attract prey. Ross had been the one to see the light as they picked their way to the climber, just after losing the path; he had also been the one to see what was making it, seconds too late. It was horribly, _disgustingly_ unfair.

They both should’ve known better, really. 

He shook the memory out of his head.

He clumsily clambered over a cluster of rocks, the illuminated path now visible among the murk. This area was now wholly unfamiliar, and as much as his head screamed at him to hide under cover all the way to Phi, Ross found himself following the lights. If whatever had crunched him before was still around, it either did not notice him or didn't care. 

It occurred to him that he should be more cautious, but the thought of being hurt again was feeling less like a threat and more like an inconvenience the longer he was out. He held onto the idea that he worse thing that could've happend to him had already happened - was happening. It barely seemed to matter what became of his body now; until the WAU was destroyed for good, he had the misfortune of being functionally immortal.

No matter what became of him, Ross would stop it.

The outline of Phi emerged from the nothingness.

Ross couldn't help but wonder if Simon actually succeeded in firing the ARK into space; he wasn't sure what to make of the idea either way.

He was up there too, somewhere. 

Another Ross. A Ross who had scoffed at the idea of the project, and then got scanned anyway because the idea was so painfully, endearingly _human_ that he simply had to go along with it. The memory made him cringe. Stupid smug git. He didn't know how bad things could truly get.

Perhaps it was for the best that Simon escaped him long enough to secure the ARK’s future, leaving humanity at the mercy of the stars. With the world dead, the WAU dying, and himself and his colleagues in varying stages of death, Ross found himself void of purpose.

Assuming he found Simon - assuming that he _could_ put a stop to the WAU’s horrors, the thought that that might not be the end terrified him. There was never an after, in his plans, even when he was human - _more human_. Ross didn’t want an after. He wanted this to end. The bulkhead was in full view now, illuminated by the lamps surrounding Phi. Determination gave way to ragged desperation the closer he got, and despite his body's protests he picked up the pace.

After the impact event, he'd fallen into a similar mental pit. There was a sense of borrowed time - twiddling his thumbs until the end truly came, and not even the looming spectre of the WAU, or the even the greater existential horror of extinction, could fill that hole completely. Death had given his life a sense of urgency, before; the feeling that if he didn't do things now, he would never get the chance. After the apocalypse, it felt more like a convenient exit strategy.

He wondered if Other Ross was also suffering the same aimlessness, the lack of ambition. A part of him hoped that he was.

He hoped that not knowing the WAU’s fate would eat him _alive_.

Ross reached out into the electrics - one of the few perks of revival - and the entrance to Phi opened with a mechanical roar of metal and moving water. He slipped inside. The corridor to the airlock was bright, the interior pleasantly devoid of the WAU's interference in a way that reminded him fondly of how things used to be. Given how early Phi evacuated its staff, he could only chalk it up to the lack of human presence.

Standing outside the second pressurized door, Ross could hear the torrent of water filling the airlock so that he could enter. Now he had no doubt Simon had been through.

He stepped into the next chamber, and as soon as the door swung shut the water began to drain. The electrics still worked, thankfully, but it was like there was an invisible barrier stopping him from reaching out any further - likely an outage. Ross realized with some amusement that all he’d probably have to do was follow Simon’s trail of destruction right to the Space Gun.

But how to get him out?

He could feel the lingering wet on the floor as the last of the water left the chamber, grateful to be walking through air again. He held on to the idea that it might all be over soon. The final door crept open with a metallic hiss, and for the first time in his life, Ross entered Phi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, here's baby's first fanfic! I found Ross' character in SOMA very intriguing, so I couldn't resist writing about him. I can't guarantee I'll continue but I do have a... Vague direction in mind. Regardless I hope you enjoyed reading Ross' Entire Life is a Misery: The Underwater Musical


	2. Chapter 2

The inside of Phi was darker than expected. The station shifted and groaned like a churning stomach as the structures around the doors settled again, and Ross entered the first corridor with caution. 

It was dismaying but not surprising to see that the WAU had made its home inside Phi too, a large knot of growth nesting in one of the first doorways, wires coiled like giant serpents. Ross hoped Simon and him would be the only reanimated horrors up and about in Phi - assuming Simon was still here at all. Hardly one for exercise even when alive, he wasn’t entirely convinced he’d be able to outrun anything, walking corpse or not.

As he wandered further inside, the corridors opened into a central control room, of sorts, lit only by the emergency lighting that sat just above ground level. Fingers brushing over the discarded papers on the table, Ross was struck suddenly by how silent the station had become now the doors had settled. Tau had been like living inside a haunted house, in how the complex groaned and creaked around them - but Phi felt every bit as abandoned and empty as it looked. It was equal parts disconcerting and reassuring.

Ross stood outside the door of the Launch Dome. There wasn’t quite the trail of destruction he’d expected to see, if the state Simon had left Omicron and Tau was anything to go by, but if he were to guess Simon was anywhere, it would be there.

Still, he opted to leave it for last. It was procrastination at its finest, he knew, but he told himself he needed to check everywhere first, lest Simon slip away when he wasn’t looking. With the power to the doors seemingly out - for now - it wasn’t as if he’d be going anywhere.

There wasn’t too much of note on the rest of the upstairs deck, asides from the power relay room and the WAU infestations in the storage and bathroom. 

After being stuck in a glass box for so long, the chance to explore somewhere new - somewhere that felt close to _normal -_ made something approaching warmth bloom in his chest for the first time in months. Ross shut the doors to the overrun rooms behind him to preserve the illusion for a bit longer.

Ross climbed downstairs. The absence of life rang hollow in the vacant hall, and all that remained were the half finished tasks of its previous occupants. Bullets, half constructed, never to be fired. Blueprints and bits of payload. Logically speaking, Simon had no reason to be here, but he couldn’t help but indulge the desire to explore further, telling himself that the purpose was twofold; it would give him valuable time to puzzle a way of convincing Simon to come along with him a second time.

The train of thought ended abruptly at the sight of blood. 

There was a trail - wheel tracks - leading to the loading platform. And at the end was the body of Dr Chun. 

It hadn’t gone unnoticed that she hadn’t returned from the failed ARK launch, and Ross realized with a some revulsion they had all been far too generous when they assumed she’d been killed by the local wildlife. 

The spanner next to her smashed head was slick with gore. 

_What on Earth happened here?_

There was almost a nonchalance, a pragmatism, to the crimson path leading to the cargo shuttle - to the trolley set askew next to the door, and Ross tried to picture the scene. How long did it take the ARK team to retreat from the body, their precious cargo splattered with its creator’s own brain and blood? Was her murder the reason the launch failed, or the by-product of miscarriage, and second guessing? 

Disgusting as it was, the failed launch had been a stroke of luck for him; without the need to attempt a second time, there would be no reason for Simon to pass through Omicron - let alone risk the abyss.

Another knot of WAU growth had sprouted on one of the doors, he noted as he left. Ross felt a sting of urgency, hurrying to the ladder.

It was time to address the elephant in the room.

As he suspected, the outage didn’t so much extend to the Launch Dome as radiate outward. From his position outside, it was impossible to truly know the cause, but he could only assume that the force of firing the gun had knocked the power out. Unstable as PATHOS-II’s power supply was nowadays, it may just be possible to kick it back into action long enough to extract Simon.

Ross tried the door anyway on the off chance, bypassing the button entirely. It was like a sixth sense, a feeling - a knowing - that he couldn’t quite put a name to, or compare to anything else. The closest he’d come to describing his new affinity with the electrics would be an out-of-body experience, reminiscent of the semi dreaming state he’d been trapped in after his first ‘death’. He had no body, yet could see and touch everything.

Bizarrely, he heard water drain from the airlock.

The first door eventually swung open with a metallic scream, the room flashing with red lights. It was almost relieving to find that it was too good to be true - the monitor to the omnitool sensor was powered off, and he was unable to reach into the electrics to the next room past the broken circuit, leaving another hunk of metal between him and Simon. He prayed it would be as easy as resetting a breaker on a tripped fuse, the outage a result of a system overload and not a more complete, catastrophic station failure. 

Ross’ heart tugged as he realized it was probably pitch black inside the Dome. He started to appreciate the gravity of the other’s situation fully; if the room was in any way escapable, Simon would’ve left by now.

He felt compelled to knock, pressing close to the door to hear if there was any activity on the other side.

“Hello?” 

Nothing. The door consisted of metal several inches thick. He wouldn’t be surprised if Simon couldn’t hear him.

“Simon.” He raised his voice, the static radiating off of his own body making him shudder involuntarily.

His eyes shut as he tried to focus - connect to something, anything.

_“Simon!”_

“-uh? Huh?”

Ross found himself more startled that he could hear Simon, and not the other way around.

_The short range comms. Of course._ How could he forget, that Simon now spoke with no mouth, just like he did?

There were footsteps - distant, heavy and metallic.

“Simon!” The buzz of this tiny, tiny success made Ross feel heady, brimming with rising excitement. “Simon, I need you to-”

  
“Oh _fuck_ , it’s you again.” 

Ross felt a sickening lurch as the feeling of elation dropped quicker than it had first emerged, tentative, leaving a gaping pit in his stomach. Was he really so naive as to wish for a warm welcome, even for a second?

A silence echoed in the space between them, lingering long enough that Ross worried that he’d imagined the reply, until Simon broke the silence again:

“Didn’t you get eaten?”

“I did.”

“Why aren’t you _dead_ ? I thought-” Simon stopped as a bout of nervous laughter escaped him, bordering hysterical. “Ha! Ha, oh _Christ_ , I-... I thought I was gonna be alone down here forever!”

“Well, lucky you.” Any spiel he’d prepared previously dried up in Ross’ throat. Of all the reactions he’d expected from Simon, relief was never one of them, and it made his gut twist guiltily. He heard himself sigh. “And to answer your previous question-,”

_The WAU won’t let me die_ , he stewed, barely holding his tongue. 

“-The WAU used electromagnetism to repair my body the first time I died, Simon. So long as I’m around PATHOS-II, it can theoretically do that as many times as it needs to.”

“Oh.” Simon replied, flat. “Could’ve used that treatment a few dozen times out there, I kept having to touch these weird butthole looking things whenever a monster knocked me around.”

“...WAU flowers.” Ross didn’t feel like unpacking that. Simon wasn’t wrong, though. “Being trapped in a box is a prerequisite for the VIP treatment, I’m afraid,” he answered, wry.

“Uhh. Does being trapped in a launch room count as a box?”

“You’re not dead, Simon, as far as the WAU is concerned. It won’t take much interest unless that changes.” Ross suspected the other was joking, but he answered fully anyway. His brows tugged into a knot. “Speaking of... Why _are_ you trapped in there?”

“Catherine-,” Simon choked. Ross recalled the body downstairs, though he knew it couldn't be the same Catherine being referred to.

There was a sound somewhere between a hitched breath and a sob. It was a short while until Simon spoke again.

“The door opener- the _Omnitool_ , it- it died on me after the launch. The lights- I… I couldn’t open the door.” 

It was strange, how painfully human he sounded. Ross had known Simon was the legacy scan from the A.I. toolkit as soon as he’d first heard the name - he’d also known that Simon the Template was Simon the _Human,_ once upon a time. And yet, despite everything, he couldn’t quite reconcile the two; Simon the legacy scan was here, in front of him, unfolded - moving and feeling and _hurt_. Ross really didn’t know what to say. 

“Ah,” he offered, unhelpfully.

“I think launching the Space Gun killed the power.” The voice on the other side of the door sounded watery. “I shouldn’t have yelled at her. I’m such a fucking _idiot_.”

“Dr Chun?” 

“Catherine,” Simon corrected. “She was in the Omnitool. I’ve been carrying her around… She was the one who wanted us to launch the ARK in the first place. Kinda why I’m here.”

“So you launched the ARK,” Ross probed the topic carefully, more a statement than a question. Although he savoured this rare moment of co-operation and understanding, he felt like he was talking to a wounded animal. He missed real human contact terribly, as much as he wished it wasn’t the case.“... What were you arguing about?” 

Ross thought back again to Catherine’s real body, laying on the floor somewhere below them. Her absence from this conversation spoke volumes; there was something disgustingly unfair about dying just at the finish line, not once - but twice. The only silver lining was that this time she was able to see her project succeed.

“I- I thought we were getting on the ARK.” Simon sounded deflated, ashamed of his own childish admission. He made a sound, a parody of a choked whimper. “I thought- I didn’t think it would be making another copy, like before. She made it sound like- like we’d be _there._ I didn’t think I’d- we’d just be left behind.”

Ross recognized the bitterness - he’d felt it before, and still did. Unlike Simon though, he’d at least had the advantage of understanding from the start that it would be a matter of copying his consciousness, rather than transplanting it. There was a version of them both that would perceive it as a spontaneous arrival to Paradise, but the original would always be left behind, stuck in the same nightmare.

He didn’t realize how lost he’d gotten inside his own head again until Simon’s voice cut through the silence again.

“... Are you still there?” Simon sounded tiny. “Say something.”

“I’m sorry,” Ross said, before his brain caught up with his mouth, or where ever his voice lived nowadays. “I think I know how you feel.”

The space between them felt charged, heavy. He shouldn’t have said that, but he couldn’t help but cling to the slither of human connection between them greedily, his failures and proverbial second-coming giving Ross a horrible clarity of mind. No longer boiling over with regrets that had been left to stew for months on end without interruption, driiving mad with desperation, just how far he’d sunk painted an ugly picture indeed. 

He felt as if he was looking at himself properly for the first time as if from above, the events previous playing out in front of him again.

Ross had had every intention of killing Simon once he’d fed WAU the poisoned imprint. Distantly, he supposed he would still have to. He was using Simon as a means to an end; morally impermissible by any standard, whether Kantian or his own.

But chasing a clear conscience now was selfish, he thought, given how dire things were - and how worse everything could still get if left unchecked. It didn’t stop him from wanting it regardless.

He’d left another awkward pause hanging in the air, he realized. Ross’ social skills left much to be desired even in life, so it was little surprise to him that death had depleted that particular well even further when Simon rekindled the conversation again.

“So, uh. You didn’t need an omnitool to get into Tau. Or here.” Simon spoke as if he was trying to talk a bomb into defusing itself. Given their last interaction, Ross could hardly blame him.

“Not with the power out, no-” Ross continued talking over the distressed sound from the other side of the door. “-But it’s still on elsewhere in the station. It probably just needs rebooting.”

“Wow,” Simon sounded dazed. “I really thought technology would’ve advanced beyond ‘just turn it off and on again’ by now.”

Ross felt a prickle of static - the comms, he supposed - as Simon braced himself to speak again.

“Ross,” it was the first time Simon had addressed him with his actual name and not as an ‘it’. “Why are you here?”

He heard the metallic shifting of feet on the other side. As much as he dreaded this conversation, with the added weight of everything that had transpired between them, it had to happen sooner or later.

_Rip it off, just like a plaster._

“We have unfinished business.” Ross tried a breath, felt his lungs inflate and deflate with their stale air - a closed circuit _._ His pleas were pitiful even to his own ears. “I _have to_ stop the WAU, Simon. I need your help. You’re the only one who can help me - help _humanity_.”

“Of course- Of _course_ you’re only here for the fucking _WAU_ again.” Simon spat, the force of the sound sending a shiver down Ross’ spine as the static from the comms crackled and hissed. A venomous snake, indeed. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“Did you think I was here for a social call?” Ross felt impatience burn at his shoulders, travelling down his arms to his clenched fists in angry rivulets. “Simon, I told you before. This isn’t about you or me, this is about the fate of-”

“-Fate of Humankind, yeah, I know. I’ve heard that one before.”

“Neither of us can die, Simon. Nothing can.” He drew another breath as if to steady himself, bracing himself against the door. “I’m not on a schedule. I really can wait here forever.”

“Better make yourself comfortable then.”

Ross threw up his arms, exasperated. He took some steps back, and counted to five. He couldn’t fuck this up this now, he couldn’t.

“You _are_ coming out of there, Simon. I’ll make sure of it.”

He started towards the open door of the airlock chamber, wishing petulantly that he could get out of range before the other could respond.

“Wait!”

Ross jumped. He turned, slowly, expectant of another barb.

“Wait, wait. Don’t leave me here alone.” The words tumbled out of Simon as if he were falling over them, fear of being left to his own thoughts winning over anger again. Simon had just shown his hand. “You’re definitely gonna come back, right?”

There was something small and scared in that voice. Ross had no way of knowing or appreciating just how Simon had been in there, trapped alone in the dark, kicking himself for not keeping track of time. As much as he wished it wasn’t the case, for all intents and purposes Simon was a full human consciousness. Down here, after everything that had happened on PATHOS-II, that counted for something.

For all he knew, they were the only two left.

And Ross knew too well how solitary confinement gnawed at your bones, stripped you bare and nested deep in your head. With no one to confirm or deny what you were experiencing, it was hard to be sure of anything at all - stranded in time without the natural cycles of light and dark, the ordinary rhythms of living among other human beings. His own sense of self had crumbled horrifyingly fast under those circumstances, made all the worse for the non-consensual mutations and body modifications he’d woken up to. 

He forced himself to remember further that Simon was even more lost in time than he was, thrown directly from a brain scan to almost 100 years into the future. 

Ross wasn’t sure if he could continue doing this.

He sighed.

“I’ll be back, Simon.” A phantom smile tugged at the edge of his blown jaw, a mere reflex. “If all else fails, you can just crawl up the Space Gun.” It’s a poor attempt to salve the tension between them, but Ross felt compelled to try anyway.

“Tried that,” Simon’s laugh this time is reluctant, embarrassed. “It’s too slippy.”

That startled a laugh out of him. It was an amusing image, despite how revealing it was to desperate heights had Simon reached in his confinement. If the other heard him, he didn’t comment on it as Ross turned to leave a second time, this time feeling a little lighter than before.

“I’ll be as quick as I can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this is still kind of terrifying, but I hope people are enjoying it. With this plus the sections of Ch 3 I've already written out, this is officially the longest piece I've ever written woooo
> 
> I never expected to love writing dialogue for these two as much as I did this chapter. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note - I've added a canonical character death tag for this chapter! Please use your discretion when proceeding
> 
> Also, huge thanks to all of you who have left kudos, and all of you who have left your lovely comments, it's been a massive motivator <3

Ross returned to the power relay room and to the greater task of, as Simon so aptly put it: ‘‘turning it off and on again’.

Fixing the door was easy, in theory. It was just a matter of finding the circuit breaker. A station like Phi was a considerable step up from his previous haunt, but Ross was used to learning as the need arose in Alpha - lest he summon a Carthage technician every time something made a suspicious noise. Until the WAU grew out of control, it was rare anything went so horribly wrong that Ross subject himself to the horrors of talking to other human beings. For all its faults, at least the WAU never trapped him in small talk; the presence of others in Alpha at all tended to unsettle him, like a bizarre violation of personal space.

Alpha wasn’t his, technically. But it was also _ his _ . And he loathed the day he would have to give it up.

Ross never would have to, now. Silver linings, he supposed.

It was becoming increasingly clear, however, that A.I.-Psychologist-Does-Not-An-Electrician-Make. 

The crowning jewel of his achievements in the purely electrical field was fixing the kettle. He reasoned that wires and circuits behaved in ways predetermined by their function. Safe and perfectly predictable, once you understood what that was.

So where the hell was the switch?

His search fast became impatient. The signage around the transformers was trying its best to remind him that he was liable to electrocute himself, but without the fear of death looming over his head he felt at liberty to touch everything and see what happened. And he did.

It didn’t help.

Although it was rare for Ross to ever admit defeat, after a frankly embarassingly long stretch of mindless tinkering he knew it was time for a less conventional approach. At the start it felt like a fair trade off; a less expedient method, but one that felt more human than the alternative. Time was short, though, and Simon was waiting. Ross laid down on the floor - not a necessary step, but he decided he’d earned it - and tried to focus.

He thought it very much like a pulse, sometimes, in the way the EM ebbed and flowed through Phi. If he traced his awareness far enough through the cables, he could see all the way back to the dome. So it followed from that, naturally, that he would likely be able to trace all the way back to the source.

It took only a few seconds to find it this time.  


Much to his dismay, the manual reset _(of course it was manual)_ was locked inside one of the sturdier casings. Being at the bottom of the ocean, the equipment was robust, designed to not need maintenance for the better half of a human lifespan.  


Frustrated, he dug fingernails into the tiny gap of the cover and pulled. He’d over-estimated it. The strength in his own atrophied arms surprised him as it came loose almost immediately, and he fell backwards with a muffled yelp.

The next step was an easy one. He moved the switch - once, twice - and the station went dark.  


The power stuttered in place just long enough for Ross to worry he’d broken it, before it kicked back into life again. The sensation of not being able to connect to any of the electrical systems wasn’t one he enjoyed. He hadn’t realized how natural it felt, or how accustomed he’d become to the symbiosis until he felt cold in its absence, momentarily blinded. 

The thought made him shudder as he rose up, returning briskly to the Launch Dome.

“Simon.” Ross announced, slipping back into the empty airlock chamber. “The power should be back on.”

It was no struggle to find him this time; Simon apparently hadn’t moved since they last spoke.

“Uhh, cool!”  


A beat passed, before Simon added: “Thanks.”

Ross’ silence was long and expectant. There was no activity from the other side of the door.

“Well?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you coming out?” Ross stepped back, as if he was the only thing blocking the gigantic arc of the door swinging open. “The button should be on. Just press it.”

“I’ll come out when I’m ready. Just- look, thanks, okay, I just-”

“I don’t understand what the problem is.” This was beginning to remind Ross of the tech support job he’d suffered through during the third year of his Bachelors. Without a visual, he was at liberty to mentally replace Simon with any number of confused old ladies. “The power is back now. If it’s broken I can just open it from my side-”

“No!"

Ross froze, taking a few bewildered steps away from the door.

“Look, the problem is you, okay? Just... I’ll come out when I come out.”

“I’m trying to help, Simon.” Ross pinched the bridge of his nose - not that there was much left to pinch - frustration burning his skin again.  “I’m not going to kill you?” He tried, tone incredulous, like he was explaining to a child there were no monsters under the bed. 

As morbid as it was, surely Simon knew he was of no use to Ross dead, even in his least charitable memories of what had transpired in Alpha? “It’s perfectly safe out here. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Thanks?” Simon sucked in a breath. "Look, I appreciate your help, it's just... This whole thing is just really uncomfortable for me."  


“What do you want me to say?”

“Being near you really messes up my circuits.” Simon spoke as if through gritted teeth, like a confession was being drawn out of him. 

Ross could only surmise that was the politest way for Simon to say that he didn’t want to share a space with a literal monster. It was rich, coming from an Occu-Torch stabbed into a decapitated corpse, but he respected the tact. 

Simon continued. “Can you just stand _outside_ the airlock, and open the door for me from there or something?” Ross thought he heard an amused lilt for split second. "There's, uh. There's no button."

Ross felt like hitting something. 

“Of course. You should’ve said.” 

Had life always been this bloody difficult? He was beginning to wonder why he ever left isolation.

Ross acquiesced to his demands, stepping outside the chamber. His focus shifted to where he had tried to reach before, the complete circuit opening a passage to the mechanism that controlled the complex gears of the airlock door. The door on his side of the airlock swung shut.

It was a lengthy process, but Ross was good at waiting. He listened as the airlock filled with water and then drained, the noise strangely comforting in its familiarity, the background melody of all his years living in Tau. He stepped away from the door before it opened, careful to keep some space between them.

Finally, it swung open.

From a distance, it was easy to pretend that Simon was a human and not another WAU abomination, the red lights that stood in for his eyes notwithstanding. He knew better now, of course; Ross had had a good look at him during his impromptu climber visit, and it was not a pretty sight - especially when he remembered just whose body it was that Simon was piloting. 

Simon was the picture of uncertainty, peaking out from the airlock door like he was expected something to jump out. Droplets of water dribbled down his suit, small puddles tracing his cautious steps back into the dry.

“Simon-”

“Jesus!”  Simon practically hit the ceiling. For a moment, Ross was afraid he was going to turn and flee back into the Launch Dome.

“It’s Dr Ross, actually.”

“Christ. Okay. Shut up.” Simon's voice came out a wheeze, clutching the omnitool close to his chest. “You know I can’t see you half the time, right?”

“What?”

“I said you mess with my circuits. Its like you just blink in and out of existence.” Simon laughed self-consciously. “It’s kinda just like teleporting, actually.”

"If I could teleport, I promise you I would’ve taken care of the WAU myself by now.”

It was a poor attempt at a joke, even by Ross’ standards.

“Yeah.” Simon’s voice lost any levity it had had before. His hands wrung over the omnitool in his hands nervously, red eyes bouncing from Ross back to the tool, before they found their home on the empty port on the control console. “Cath explained it was just electromagnetism messing with my optics, like it was just rebooting my consciousness when it got too much. There were some creatures like you back at Lambda and the Curie.”

The MS Curie? Ross had certainly missed a lot while he was stuck. 

Simon made a noise like a cleared throat. 

“I’m gonna plug the omnitool in. Give me a minute.” Simon crossed the room purposefully, before Ross could even think to stop him.

“It was my understanding that it was broken?”

“No. Yeah. Kind of.” He sighed. “I don’t know what’s wrong with it.” 

A silence hung in the air for a few moments, the clunky fingers of Simon’s diving suit tracing delicately over the omnitool’s dark screen. His voice was firm when he next spoke. “I need to see if I can bring Catherine back before anything else.”

_ Oh, no. _

“But you said it was broken? The omnitool-”

“I need to do this, Ross. You can wait a little longer.”

Simon slotted the omnitool into its port with a satisfying  _ click _ , pulling up a chair. 

Ross wondered if this was what watching a car crash was like.

The screen lit up. 

An excruciating minute passed as the tool registered, the settings loading onto the station.  


He couldn’t tear his eyes away.

_ ERROR. _

“No.”

_ ERROR. CORTEX CHIP CORRUPTED. _

“No, nononono-”

There was a mechanical roar as the various systems in Phi began to come online, one by one - the ones that didn't neccesitate an A.I. 

The omnitool itself was working perfectly. 

“Oh, oh fuck. Oh fuck,  _ fuck. _ ”

The cortex chip was not.

Simon tapped the screen, frantic. Once, twice. Again and again. The message did not change.

_ ERROR.  _

“Why is this happening?” He turned to Ross, desperate. “You know how these work, right? What’s going on?”

Ross knew what was on the screen already without looking, the picture sharp in the edges of his awareness. He tentatively approached, the screen beginning to shudder and glitch the closer he got.  


His voice was steady when he finally spoke; he never imagined he’d have to issue a death notice like this one. “The cortex chip is corrupted.” He could only confirm what Simon knew already. He must've known. It was hard to blame him for trying to change the horrible reality, though, that the only friend he had on the entire, barren Earth was gone for good. 

“She’s not coming back, Simon.”

“It's the same message as before, I just- I don't get it.” He trailed off. "How can that even happen?"  


The red lights rose back up to meet the screen again, as it continued to dance with EM interference.  


“Oh.”

Simon’s entire body stiffened, as if in full rigor. 

“It’s like… Oh, Christ.” Simon fell listlessly back into the chair. “It’s like with the scan of Brandon Wan, back in Theta- the scan shut down when the stress got too much.” 

Ross wasn’t sure he wanted to know what he meant.

Simon sat motionless.  


Ross could not take his eyes off of Simon as the dawning horror began to spread, swallowing the man whole like a cancer. He watched as it metastasized - as he began to tremble, starting in his fingers and hands and escalating to his shoulders and then his entire body, like the ocean floor itself was shaking. He couldn’t see Simon’s face, his real face, but he could nearly imagine it. Eyes locked in a thousand yard stare, jaw slack, skin drained of blood. He put a hand to his helmet, as if to muffle a sob.  


“Oh my God.” Simon fell forward, holding his helmet in his hands. “I killed her. Oh my God. I fucking- fucking killed her!”

“Simon, it’s not your fault-”

Simon couldn’t hear him. “Am I a murderer? I didn’t- I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know she would  _ die! _ ”

“You couldn’t have known.”

“No!” Simon’s voice cracked as he stood from the chair, the sound reverberating in the empty room and choking them both with static feedback. “It’s just like before- the… The pieces were  _ there _ , I just never put them together!”

“I was too stupid to realize I was a copy before, and I was stupid to realize that stress could kill her then. How could I forget the scans got stressed? It was so... _Fragile_.” Somehow he deflated even more, leaning his weight against the control panel. “She was right. She kept explaining but I just. I just never listened.  The one good thing down here, and I fucking murdered her.”

“You’re being unreasonable,” Ross interrupted, finally. “None of this is _normal_. Of course you’re not thinking of how brain scans behave - there’s no precedent for this at all. You only acted as any other human would.”  Conversations like this made him feel like he was treading water in the deep end of a pool, made all the more frustrating for the fact that he was supposed to know how to do this.  


After the apocolypse, it was more akin to being dragged down into the abyss kicking and screaming. There wasn't a protocol for armageddon;  Ross knew all about grief and how the brain processed and overcame it in broad, theoretical strokes, perhaps even set out a list of strategies that worked for most people most of the time. It was the kind of knowledge that got him through papers, and not quite the kind that manifested in saying the right things at the right time.  He’d learnt the grammar for a language he didn’t speak fluently. 

“Besides." He leant back on the table's edge. “Murder implies pre-meditation.”

Simon’s arms came to clutch at his head again, as if he was contemplating pulling it free from his body. He collapsed back into the chair instead.

His voice was barely audible. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Well, there you go.” Ross clicked his tongue. There was a good reason Ross was an A.I. psychologist, and not a human one. “Not a murderer.”

Simon’s shoulders were heaving. There was a mechanical hum as his optics moved around the room, searching.

“Where the fuck even are you.”

“I’m here.” Ross hadn’t moved. “Next to the table. About 3 feet away.” 

“I-... I think I need to be on my own.” 

Simon stood up, giving him a wide breadth as he headed for the ladder on the other end of the room.

Momentarily, he turned. And then he spoke, quiet, indiscernible. “I don’t know what to do.”

“... Come out whenever you’re ready.” Ross offered. He didn't think there was anything he could've said that would've been enough.  


“Thanks.” Simon’s gaze met his hesitatingly as he prepared to climb - Ross wondered if the other man actually could see him or not. “See you around, I guess.” 

Ross only managed a vague, affirmative noise in reply. 

Books and films had always made it look like surviving the apocalypse was a feat of personal endurance - that the last ones left were the very best humanity had to offer, and that these bastions of their species would lead them to pastures anew.

It was nothing like that. Even calling it luck laughed in the face of all the suffering they had endured to make it this far at all. Surviving the comet had only given them the luxury of a prolonged downfall - one which Ross had a front row seat to. Could him and Simon even be called survivors, when all that they had in common was that they had died? 

Ross watched as Simon disappeared down the ladder. He no longer had the resolve to stop him.

They were not people any more than they were ghosts, haunting the picked bones of humanity’s last settlement.

He couldn't even begin to think of a way forward from here. Destroying the WAU felt more and more like an impossibility by the second.

What kind of half-baked, pipe dream of a plan had this been, anyway? Free Simon, and toddle along together back to Alpha to finish what they had started? 

Ross remembered how he had felt when he’d first woken up proper in Omicron, in the fallout of the blackbox malfunctions that had killed all the station’s staff. He remembered the climber, how he had died just as he reached safety. Every time he thought the end was in sight there would be something else, some other unforeseen horror lurking behind the corner, waiting to find another way to trap him in this nightmare again.

It was clear that in order to break the cycle he would need Simon’s full co-operation. Hindsight was a dreadful thing. Before, it had been laughably easy; he’d even been able to drag Simon back to the WAU’s heart after he’d tried to flee, once his own body’s electromagnetism had knocked him out. But taking him through the abyss?

Unrealistic, at best. By Ross’ own estimations though? He was shit out of luck.

They were at an impasse. Simon, for now, was reluctant to leave the only other sentient life form - even one he hated - but that could change at the drop of a hat. And Ross… Well, what else  _ was _ there? Abandoning his goal was not an option. It had never been an option.

God, he’d really cocked this up. He’d been thwarted by a fucking fish, of all things.

He grazed a hand over his rearranged stomach, tentatively tracing the new bumps and sinews of WAU metal that had risen to the surface. Had that really only happened today?

Ross finally tore his gaze from the empty ladder, and stalked off back to the power room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about Cath guys. It felt very Simon-esque for him to hold onto the tiny slither of hope for her right until the end, even when the writing was already on the wall. RIP. 
> 
> I gotta run now, so I can get a head start on the electricians coming to beat me to death for horrible inaccuracies in the first half of this chapter.
> 
> Thanks again for reading! See you soon in Ch 4.


	4. Chapter 4

If there was a normal timeframe for checking in on someone after a tragedy, it had probably come and gone. Twelve hours had passed since Ross last saw Simon. In that time he'd devoured most of the Phi had lying around, easy to access, and had made a start cracking into the protected ones when his boredom spiked. Of all the places he’d had to spend time recently, the power relay room was feeling positively luxurious in comparison, the room singing with a relaxing, electric hum, soothing in its uniformity. The longer Ross stayed in the relay room the more reluctant he was to leave it, and the more daunting the prospect of talking to Simon again was becoming.

Shortly after Simon had gone downstairs, Ross had come to the troubling realization that he was sharing the floor with the real Catherine’s corpse. In twelve hours he’d not returned upstairs, nor had he made any attempt to use the computers; Ross had even considered sending a message via one of the many monitors, before deciding that it likely wouldn’t be appreciated. Their previous interactions had left him confused more than anything, not sure what to do with the sense of obligation he felt to the other man despite his other plans.

“Ross?”

He looked up. 

How long had Simon been in the hallway? Despite the weight of his diving suit he’d passed soundlessly from room to room, a testament to either how skilled Simon had got at the art of stealth, or how absorbed Ross was in his own head. Given the horrors Simon had had to contend with, it shouldn’t have surprised him, but the thought that he could’ve sneaked past at any time was a startling one.

“Dr. Ross?” He watched Simon, dumbfounded, as he took a few tentative steps down the corridor to the doors branching off, all closed but the relay room. He pushed the button on one of the other doors, peaking inside. “Hello? Are you there?”

Ah. He’d forgotten about the sight issue.

“I’m here.” Ross wasn’t sure to what extent the other could feel his presence, careful as he attempted to close the distance between them, standing in the doorway. “What is it?”

“Oh. Cool.” He thought he could hear relief in Simon’s voice, thought it was likely imagined. “I was worried you’d left.”

“No fear. I don’t have anywhere else to be.” Ross couldn’t keep the bewilderment out of his reply; _theoretically_ he understood that Simon was desperate for company, but it hadn’t occurred to him that he’d actively seek him out. “The apocalypse did an excellent job clearing my schedule.”

“Glad someone’s getting some R&R down here.” Simon’s head bounced from side to side, optics murmuring gently as they searched. They apparently found what they were looking for, the red lights locking onto Ross directly.

“Hey, uh. Can you help me with something?”

Ross had no reason to refuse, really. As much as he didn’t want to, he’d just have to play his next few steps out bit by bit.

“Mhm. What is it?”

Simon sucked in a breath with a mouth he no longer had, shoulders rising and falling - it was still jarring, how well the mind could recreate the nuances of human expression so well, even when it served no mechanical function. “I want to move Cath. It feels wrong just… Just having her lying there.”

Given he was a sentient power suit, Ross had a hunch that it wasn’t the actual physical part of the task that Simon needed him for. “Did you have any ideas of what to do with her?”

“Kind of? I think it’d be easier to just show you.”

“By all means, lead the way.”

The short journey to the loading platform was spent in silence, and Ross resigned himself to the grim task ahead. 

“Do you think we could put her inside one of these?” Simon stopped in the middle of the assembly room, motioning to one of the half constructed bullets. It was large, designed for one of the heftier payloads that used to leave Phi on a regular basis.

“I hope you're not going to suggest what I think you are.”

“I’m not!” Simon threw up his hands defensively. “Jesus Christ, Ross. We're not firing her out the Space Gun. I meant like a coffin.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, she might’ve wanted that. Eternity among the stars and all.” Simon ran a hand over the satellite casings, voice softening. “I don’t think the station will take another shot, though.”

“It won’t.” Ross breathed. He hadn’t known Catherine long enough to draw any kind of conclusions about what she might’ve wanted after her _death_ , of all things. “Maybe we can just do the next best thing.”

Ross watched Simon effortlessly move one of the empty casings from the wall to the floor. It seemed big enough for a human to fit inside.

Ross didn’t realize he’d started speaking until he heard his voice. “We should try and put her as far from the walls as possible.” Nowhere in Phi was truly safe - only safer. Whatever solution they came to would just have to do. “If there’s a structure gel leakage, we’ll be in some deep water.”

“We're already pretty abyssal, I doubt it can get any worse.” Simon clicked his tongue, intercepting Ross before he can reply. "Before you say anything, I know it can get worse. I'm just joking. I don't want her to end up like the people in Tau or Omicron."

"We'd better get a move on, then."

Ross wasn’t sure when being around the other man had begun making him so anxious. Simon was a walking, talking reminder of the mission he’d failed to complete; the whole ordeal of putting Catherine to rest was almost petty when scaled to the magnitude of human suffering happening just outside of Phi. Every second spent doing something other than stopping the WAU may as well have been turning the wheel on a rack another notch.

But despite everything, doing this felt worthwhile. It didn’t make him happy, but it was rewarding in the same way freeing Simon from the Launch Dome had been - it was a feeling he wasn’t sure what to do with any more, and a feeling he couldn't really place.

Ross could feel Simon watching him as he tried to puzzle a way of holding Catherine without, well, _holding_ her, unable to ignore the thick globs of blood that coated her suit, the sight of her injuries so up close turning what was left of his stomach.

“How are you so squeamish?" Simon must’ve noticed his hesitation. "I mean, no offence, she's in a better shape than you are right now.” 

“Not all of us are resurrected with gloves, Simon.” Ross hooked his arms under Catherine’s awkwardly. Her head lulled to the side as he shifted his weight slightly, exposing the clot of dark blood that had dried into her hair and skin. God, he regretted agreeing to this.

“Oh, yeah.” Simon gave the nod, and they lifted. “You know, these do feel like my hands. The same kind of tactile feeling I had before, kind of. It's a bit different in this suit though.” 

The conversation was jarring, given what they were both doing; Ross tried to focus on the other man's voice, rather than the body they were holding. He suspected Simon's distraction was deliberate though, the red lights of his optics somehow distant and unfocused, pointed anywhere but at Catherine. “Most of the time, anyway. Catherine said it was just my brain filling in the gaps where my normal senses should be. Like a phantom limb, except it's my whole body, I guess.”

“That’s reasonable. You are still in a human body, for all intents and purposes.”

“I dunno. Am I?” The walk was mercifully short, Simon attempting to line them up with the empty casing. “I’m a corpse stuffed in a Haimatsu Suit. I don’t even have a face!” 

“Mhm,” Ross mumbled, distracted as they carefully set Catherine down. “Do you think you’re still human?”

“Apparently I’m functioning just on the force of denial alone, even if I am in a human shape.” Simon sighed. His gaze lingered on Catherine, the sight no less unpleasant than it had been before. “Not to mention the other Simons. The original me is dead, there’s the one in the ARK, there was the me in Omicron when I switched bodies. And _me, me."_

Ross balked. “... The one in Omicron?”

“I drained his battery,” Simon muttered, voice flat. “I didn’t want him to wake up in this... This place. There wouldn’t have been any way out of that room once we left. He'd just be stuck there in the same room forever, in this fucking nightmare.”

Ross felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “I think you made the right call.”

It was Simon’s turn to avoid eye contact now. “So, uh. Yeah. I dunno if I still count. I haven’t decided yet.”

“You could just start at ‘person’, and work from there.” As much as the conversation topic was one that genuinely fascinated him, there was something of an elephant in the room.

“Is this... Okay?” Ross gestured to Catherine, though he wasn’t sure if Simon could see it. It was a wonder they were standing this close at all; perhaps the EM was less potent than before, or Simon had simply grown used to it. More likely though, Simon was just polite enough to not mention the interference - perhaps he could find a way of controlling the fields in time, if that was even possible.

“Yeah, it’s… It’s better. I think this is better.” The result was less clumsy than originally expected - Catherine looked far from the peaceful image of slumber usually aspired to, but it felt better than leaving her at the scene of her murder, sprawled out in a pool of her own blood. “Best we can do, anyway.”

It was the closest to dignity they could probably give her, given the circumstances. He stepped back as Simon draped a tarp over the bullet-turned-coffin, watching him fuss and pull at the contortions and folds of the cover until it laid flat. Despite helping with everything else, Ross still felt like he was intruding on a private moment simply by being there, turning away. His insides squirmed with a painful self consciousness he hadn't felt for quite some time, suddenly hyper aware of where he was and every tiny thing he was doing. Simon must've wanted him here for a reason, but he was increasingly unsure of what that was. 

“Did you want to say anything?” Ross tried.

"I was never great at eulogies. My one at Ashley's funeral sucked." Simon rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly, though the bulk of the suit make the motion clumsy. “I don’t know. I just… I didn’t really know this version of Cath. It's only just beginning to sink in.” 

Ross wasn't sure he'd ever get over the dissonance. The friend Simon was mourning wasn’t the corpse they both stood over now - the Catherine Simon had shared the horrors of PATHOS-II with was still plugged in upstairs.

Simon's arms dropped limply to his side. "Just... I miss her. Despite everything, I really miss her. I wish things didn't end the way they did. I don't know what else I can say."

"Were you going to do anything with the cortex chip?"

Simon folded in on himself. Ross regretted bringing it up instantly.

"I... I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. They just don't feel the same somehow." He cast another glance to Catherine, gaze hanging over the covered body for a moment before he stepped away. "What'll happen if I take her out?"

"The omnitool will just default back to the Helper Jane A.I." The screen upstairs was still showing the same error message as it had hours ago, as damning as it was the moment it had first shown up. "Nothing will happen to the chip itself, if that's what you're worried about."

"It really isn't possible to fix her, is it?" Simon leant his helmet against the ladder, gripping one of the rungs. "I mean, I managed to fix a control chip with structure gel back in Omicron."

"It may be possible to restore the chip's functionality as a cortex chip, but I'm not sure if it's possible to restore her as a _person_. I have no idea what would've become of her after the data corrupted." Ross wasn't sure this is what Simon meant by the force of denial holding him together, but it was an unpleasant sight nonetheless, watching him continue to grasp at straws. The fact that he'd not lost it entirely in the short time he'd spent on PATHOS-II was miracle in itself. "I think it's kinder not to find out."

"Yeah." Simon's reply was worryingly curt. "Maybe."

He disappeared up the ladder. Despite the lack of invitation to follow, Ross felt like it was the right thing to do. There was no sense of ceremony once they both made it upstairs; the procedure was short and clinical: take out the Omnitool, eject the cortex chip. Plug Omnitool back in, watch Phi boot up for a second time. This time, all systems were go - Ross could feel all the screens light up one by one around the station, somewhere in the back of his perception, a quiet buzz.

Simon held the chip as if he was cradling a butterfly.

“I keep forgetting I'm just one of these.” He turned over the chip in his hand. It was unclear if the line of questioning was a way of Simon processing his feelings, or a way from distracting from them. "I guess it's not that much different from being a brain in a meat-suit, being a chip in a... In a dead woman. Christ. This is still so fucked."

Ross thought back to Simon the way he knew him originally: a flat scan of a brain, merely a template for mapping complex A.I. systems onto. He certainly wasn't a human then. Consciousness in that state was impossible - but then again, Simon as he was now should've been impossible - and it was, until the WAU stepped in. The doubt didn't sit well with him.

“Well,” Ross drawled, watching Simon as he slipped the cortex chip to sit loosely in the suit's Omnitool holster. A keepsake, perhaps - in a way, it wasn't much different from keeping a lock of hair, or a relative's ashes. “If it means anything, I think you’re perfectly human, if that’s what you think you are. You certainly seem to believe that Catherine is.”

"She was." Simon didn't sound convinced, though he could hardly blame him - they were all so incongruant with their original forms by now that human didn't quite cut it any more. "I dunno, it's not just form, I can't stop thinking about all the other copies running around. Hell, I'm a copy. Twice copy. I don't like thinking about all the other Simons that are just as much of a Simon as me, when _I'm Simon_ , you know?"

Ross huffed a small laugh.

“And, I dunno.” Simon continued. “You’re not exactly…” 

Ross turned his head. Simon’s face was expressionless, though he at least has the decency to look away sheepishly as their eyes met, trailing off.

“Not exactly what?” Ross asked, feigning nonchalance. The question doesn’t anger him - how human he was currently was the least of his problems, really - but it made his skin crawl all the same. “For all intents and purposes, I am the same mind in the same body as before. I don’t see the problem.”

He’s being facetious, he knows, but Ross doesn’t want to give Simon the satisfaction of being right either. Not unless he comes up with a better argument.

"I mean, I'd congratulate you on being the last human alive if you didn't die. You have to be at least half structure gel, right?" Simon gestured vaguely to him - presumably he could at least see him enough to know where he was stood. Ross suddenly wished he'd just stay invisible. “What would you call what you are?”

“Do you not think I’ve had this exact conversation with myself before?” Ross shook his head - or tried to, the pull of the cables around his neck making him shudder as it tugged on what was left of his skin. The sensation was making him vicerally ill. Or perhaps it was just this line of conversation - the sooner it was over, the better. “It… It really doesn’t matter. At least not to me.”

Ross' skin tinged electric, the sensation frantic and creeping like crawling insects. The pair of eyes on him felt needle sharp. His dead heart began to quicken in his chest - he wasn't aware that he'd begun to pace, gravitating towards an exit, until he saw the other man press himself against the control panel, as if bracing himself for an explosion.

"Take it easy, I didn't mean anything by it."

Ross stopped. Simon didn't move. Every second of time passing was like wading through tar.

Simon must’ve felt it too, abruptly breaking the silence.

“Sorry. I don’t know why this matters so much to me. I shouldn't have brought it up.” Simon made a poor attempt at a nervous laugh. “Maybe I’ll just settle with cyborg.” 

"It's fine. Cyborg works." There was the tiniest perforation in Ross' sense of continuity, not sure where his mind had just gone - it felt like he was merely observing his own words and actions more than he was actually doing any of them, a strange and sudden desynchronicity. Ross dragged his eyes off of Simon as he tried to ground himself again.

It was absurd to feel like he was better than the other creatures stalking around PATHOS-II, mindless and hurting, but he was, somehow, surely? He always thought his mind being intact was enough, but evidently Simon didn't quite see it that way - it explained a lot of his previous behaviour, in hindsight. Ross was just another strange and sad creature interferring with the ARK mission, like the poor, mangled woman in Omicron, or whichever poor soul was piloting the power suit in Tau. None of it mattered when it was just Ross, alone in a box, but among company identity suddenly seemed very important; the fact that the version of him Simon knew wasn't the human him - the _real_ him - was more distressing than Ross thought it had any right to be.

"I'm not... I'm not going to kill you. You don't have to do that." 

"The fact that you keep having to say that doesn't make me feel much better." Simon peeled himself up. His tone was lighter than Ross expected, though he suspected it was an effort to placate him more than anything. "Uh. Hey, thanks for your help though, I really appreciate it. Just... I'll talk to you later, okay? I guess we both live here now. Home sweet home, right?"

"Right."

It was far from domestic bliss, and the absolute last thing on the planet that Ross wanted was to _settle_ , but until he came up with another plan he was out of options; if he was lucky, he wouldn't have to endure this for much longer, and they'd both be better off for it. He would have to think of another way of shutting the WAU down.

%%%

The excess of free-time combined with freedom-to-roam turned out to be a poor combination. The next steps were hard to think about, and all routes felt equally impossible. Time was wasting. It felt like waiting for the comet all over again, an anticipation of a looming, unavoidable threat.

Ross wasn’t sure when avoiding Simon became a conscious pastime of his, but he had managed to crawl through some debris blocking one of the corridors, leading into a rudimentary staff room. Phi had no true personnel quarters - the majority sleeping in Tau - but it did have some facilities. It wasn’t unheard of for some staff members to sleep on the sofas on the edge of the room, when they couldn’t be bothered to suit up to trek down the tunnel back to their quarters. It didn’t actually look half bad.

Hastily abandoned, the living area was still scattered with the detritus of the station’s past life; half finished books, trinkets, forgotten coats and shirts left near the shower and bathroom. They were good things - human things.

If he pretended hard enough, Ross was coming in from a particularly late shift at Alpha, and everyone else was just asleep in their quarters. He picked one of the shirts off of the back of the sofa. There was no indication of who its previous owner was, thankfully - he really didn’t want to know. He ran a thumb over the fabric.

_This is stupid. Stop doing this._

Ross pulled the shirt over his head, grunting as it caught on the stretch of tubing around his shoulders. He unhooked a jumpsuit from the wall, decidedly not looking at the name embroidered onto the back, climbing into it and knotting it at the waist; with how much his body had atrophied, it looked very much like both garments were wearing him, and not the other way around. 

He considered looking in the mirror, and quickly dismissed the prospect. He could see already how everything hung off him, imagining how comical the complete picture would look.

It was strange. Ross could live with what had become of his body. Not happily, but he could cope with it - if he put on some clothes and tried to forget, the nightmare would be over. But there was something distinctly awful about catching the reflection of his face, half rotted and inhuman and riddled with tubing, luminous cables spilling out of his mouth. Ross had never considered himself especially emotive, but being able to move his face was another one of those small, selfish things he missed from his previous life. He never realized how much a smile could smooth over social interactions until he couldn’t any more, face perpetually locked in a terrifying, silent scream.

Clothes didn’t help. They made him feel _worse_ , somehow, if that was even possible.

_This is ridiculous._

Ross discarded both items of clothing. If he stopped playing pretend perhaps it would preserve the illusion that he wasn't in the midst of some kind of extended, quiet meltdown for a bit longer. He wondered what Simon would say, if he said anything at all. He wasn’t sure when he began to care so much about what he thought of him, but something about being the last sentient beings on Earth made all interactions feel life or death.

He didn't know why he was bothering. Their time was short, either way.

He scooped up as many of the books as he could find, and left them in the control room for Simon to find before he stalked off back into hiding. Home sweet home, indeed.

%%%

  
  


Ross found himself checking the WAU growth downstairs out of habit. It was no-where near Catherine, really, but it was a consistent cause for concern so long as her body was, well - _there._ The inevitability and predictable nature of the WAU’s advancement was almost comforting when compared to the murky waters of worrying about how he was going to navigate his next conversation with Simon; the inevitability there only filled him with a low level dread that he could never quite shift. No words felt like the right words, especially when there was so much at stake.

The omnitool was right _there._ Simon really could leave at any time. And yet he didn’t - it shocked him with bizarre cocktail of relief and panic in equal measure. Was this it? Dancing around each other awkwardly until the world ended again? Ross was beginning to wish he would go, if only to take the burden of decision making out of his hands. He could cope with being helpless - he had, already, and at great length. He knew better than to trick himself into thinking that there was hope again when there wasn't.

Ross huffed. The WAU hadn’t grown, despite his fervent documentation. Things were still okay in Phi, even if they didn’t feel that way.

“Do you ever just chill out?”

Ross stared up at Simon with sunken eyes.

“What?”

“Like, what is all this stuff?”

“Exactly what it looks like.” Ross stiffened. He wasn’t sure whether he should be embarrassed or not - tracking it had grown into such a dense ritual it hadn’t occurred to him that it could even be challenged. “Growth patterns, look. You saw my work in Tau, surely?”

“Yeah, I know that. This is the same stuff as in your room, I just…” Simon waved his arms around as if trying to catch his next words in the air. “I'm not interested in the patterns. I just don't get why you're avoiding me. And all this, I just... I don't get it."

“I'd be happy to explain it to you.”

"No, Ross, that's not the point. We're the last people on Earth! I _need you_ to talk to me. About literally anything." Simon knelt down so he was eye level with where he was sat, and the sheer desperation in his voice made Ross feel cold - he'd had this coming, he realized with some guilt. "It's not fair you come all the way out to find me just to pretend I'm not here. I thought you needed me."

"I do, of course I still do." Ross deflated. He wished they could talk without it devolving into anger and misunderstanding - it was frustrating, feeling as if they were in the same page but unable to put it into the right words. Or maybe they really were completely disconnected, and it was just his own wishful thinking at play. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't stop hoping. "Simon, you made your decision perfectly clear before, and I can't drag you kicking and screaming back to Alpha. We both know I can't. I just need time to think of another way."

"Hey, I didn't think I'd be left down here, okay? I thought I'd be able to escape all... This. " Simon crossed his legs, settling on the floor somewhere near him. "I'm just worried about the future. We're spending it together, whether we like it or not, and I'd like to be able to get along with you."

There wasn't any precedent for how to act or feel or think when they were like this - Ross had even begun to think he'd got the hang of being a human, before he wasn't one any more. Simon was right though, either way.

"I'm not sure how to navigate this. I'm sorry. It's... It's been a while since I last spoke to anyone." Ross knew the excuse was inadequete, the words suddenly feeling heavy in his mouth. "I know you're scared of me, and I'm not sure what I can do to change that."

"Hey, you're not the worst thing I've encountered down here. I, uh, I think I can work with that."

"Well, best of luck." Ross rose to his feet, cringing a little at the uncomfortable press of the WAU structures under his skin - the conversation was not a relieving one, but it went a small way to easing some of the tension he felt. "I was pretty rubbish with people, even before."

"Can we just... Can we just chill out, a bit?" Simon mirrored his movements, unfolding slowly and clumsily into standing. "I want to do something normal. Something that doesn't involve the end of the world, or dying, or being dead, or whatever. I promise you can go straight back to uh, WAU stuff, after."

Ross snorted. It had been a long few days - weeks, months. Maybe they could have just one okay day.

"I can do that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one ended up taking slightly longer than expected to complete, sorry - the bulk of it was done for a while, but it took some time to get back into this after I got distracted by other projects. I spent a lot of time fiddling with this chapter and I'm not sure if I am quite happy with it, but I think it's about time I moved on haha
> 
> Thanks for reading, as always!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... -taps the additional tag warnings-

“There’s no way I can fit through that.”

Ross watched Simon from halfway inside the rubble blocking the corridor, awkwardly balancing himself in the narrow foothold between two of the fallen metal struts. He had hoped that bringing Simon to the small haven of the staff room would promote a calmer atmosphere between the pair, but like most of his plans up until now, it was fast becoming undone. 

“Well, I was hoping you could knock this all down.”

"What?" Even without a face to emote with, Simon looked far from convinced, leaning his arm against one of the corridor walls as if he was going to collapse from exasperation. “Are you sure about that? I don’t want to bring down the whole of Phi just so I can look at a couple of sofas.”

“Even in worst case scenario, we're not really in any drowning risk."

“Yeah, we’ll just get crushed to pulp instead. I don’t want to spend eternity under some rubble with you, thanks.”

“You wound me.” Ross stepped over to the other side, as if to illustrate a point. Asides from the risk of the cables around his neck catching on something, being able to manoeuvre through small spaces was still quite the novelty. Simon gave one of the struts an experimental wobble. Whatever the results of the wobble test were, they were apparently bad enough for him to jump back, the ceiling whining in protest.

“Can’t you do it? I know you’ve hauled me around before, so it's not as if you're as withered as you look.”

Ross winced internally at the memory. "That's hardly the same."

"True," there was a lilt to Simon's voice that made Ross wonder if the other man was just messing with him, though he was never particularly good at telling. "Still want you to prove that we won't get crushed to atoms though."

“Fine,” Ross grit out, blithely swatting some fallen cables out of the way as he tried to get a handhold on the debris. It was a matter of pride, now. “I’ll try and bend it from this side, and then you come through. Will that be okay?”

“Could you maybe not touch the exposed wires?”

“I’m not touching them.” Ross insisted, trying to leverage himself against some of the rubble. With the knowledge that Simon could only see him intermittently, he could only assume it looked like the work of a poltergeist as he shunted one of the struts as far to one of the far sides as it would go, the roof creaking as one of the supports that had fallen horizontally across the corridor slipped. He heard a panicked gasp from a few feet away. Thankfully, the structure held. The gap looked about wide enough for the Power Suit to squeeze through, albeit with difficulty - he wasn't convinced he could move anything else without fufilling Simon's prophecy of a roof collapse.

Ross couldn't keep the incredulousness out of his voice as he stepped back from the stack of fallen pipework and debris, praying it wouldn’t collapse the moment he let go. He was beginning to think Simon might be right. “Is this… Fine?”

“Uh. I guess.”

Ross could only assume that translated to no, but he asked again anyway. "What I mean is - do you want to come through? I can’t tell if you’re just humouring me or not.”

“I mean, yeah, I kind of am. But I'm a little emotionally invested in this stupid plan now, so worth a shot, I guess.”

Ross wasn’t sure what to make of the fact that Simon was willing to play along, but his patience was endearing, if nothing else - an odd testament to how determined he was to get along with him. Simon only sighed as he psyched himself up to wriggle through.

It was a tight fit. The Haimatsu Power Suit wasn’t designed with contortionists in mind, though to his credit Simon was putting on a valiant effort as he kicked his leg through the narrow space and willed the rest of him to follow after, ducking under one of the higher beams.

“Christ, Ross. It better look like the inside of a mansion in there.” He sounded out of breath, somehow, the debris scraping against the protective lacquer of his suit as he inched past, bit by bit. Despite being the only people left, there was an air that they were trespassing - teenagers breaking into an abandoned building - a latent part of Ross’ brain expecting to be caught if they were too loud. He felt almost compelled to shush him as Simon pushed ahead, complaining the whole time. “This is so stupid. If there’s not a fountain, or gold statues, I’m out.”

“Well, prepare to be incredibly disappointed.”

“Can you step back a bit? I can’t see properly.” Simon asked, flailing. Ross wished he was still capable of smiling, feeling what he was sure would've been a laugh bubbling up in his throat. It nearly made up for the embarrassment he felt at even suggesting this at all. “Where’s my foot?”

"At the end of your leg." Ross replied, unhelpfully, though he did as he was told, watching Simon whirl one of his legs around in mid-air from a few meters away. “Just move a bit to the left, and you’re out.”

Simon followed his instructions, and promptly tumbled out of the gap, the momentum carrying him forward and nearly into Ross as he stumbled out in his hands and knees with a yelp.

Ross gave him a few moments to catch his breath - not that he needed it. “Still want to see it?”

Simon laughed, still breathless. He clambered back to his feet, brushing himself down as if he’d just dirtied some new clothes. “Well, I’m never gonna be able to get back the other way, so I guess I’ve got no choice.” 

It was a short walk to the room in question. Ross hoped he hadn't got Simon's hopes too high about it - it was still PATHOS-II, after all, and all areas of the station erred very much on the cold and metallic side of comfortable.

"Huh." Simon stopped in the threshold. "Cosy."

It was hard not to notice Simon's exploration habits: picking things up and moving them around, putting them away again - going over every little thing as if he were in a living museum. His own room had been among the exhibits, and though he'd been the one to let him in, there was still an inherent oddness in having a stranger enter your space and touch all your things as if you weren't there. Simon gravitated towards some of the discarded papers and magazines, picking up a crumpled sea-life publication and smoothing out the bent edges. Judging amount of tea rings staining the cover, it had spent the majority of its life in Phi as an impromptu coaster.

“Nice," was Simon's final assessment, letting the magazine fall from his hands. "No fountains though, so I’m gonna have to deduct points.”

“I could always break one of the pipes for you, if you want one that badly.”

“Please don’t.” Simon picked up the jumpsuit Ross had discarded earlier, turning it over in his hands, before tossing it over the back of one of the sofas. He caught glimpse of the name emblazoned on the back: Auclair, the Chief Factor. It must’ve been forgotten long before the comet, if he had been the one to leave it - he wouldn't be surprised if he'd loaned it to someone and never got around to rescuing it. Simon made his way around the unfamiliar space slowly and methodically, soundless in his exploration as he always was. “It’s… Still really jarring how normal little pockets of this place look. In some places it’s like you all only just left to get coffee or something.” Simon sat, tentative, as if he was expecting the sofa to swallow him. “Better than the one in Theta though, the lights blew up on me as soon as I came in.”

"This has certainly been one of my longer tea breaks." Ross was careful to keep distance between them both, sidling around the edges of the room. Chilling out, in heavy quotation marks, with the other man was wholly unfamiliar territory, and he was reluctant to poke the borders until Simon did so first - he suspected he had a better intuition for it than he did. “It was a lot like living in a student flat, honestly, we were all living practically on top of each other. Not nearly as chaotic, though. People in Tau knew how to clean up after themselves.”

Simon snorted. “Tell me about it. One of my roommates once left their dishes in the sink over Spring break, and by the time we all got back it had colonized the whole counter top.” He settled, leaning back into the worn cushions, and Ross wondered if he could feel the give of the soft fabric or not. If his gloved hands were real enough, then where did that leave the rest of him? Was it like wearing clothes, or was the suit like a second skin?

A loud _clunk_ resonated through the station before Ross could reply. Simon jolted upright. The metal walls trembled momentarily before the motion stopped as abruptly as they had begun, and Phi shifted back into place, leaving an unnatural silence in its wake. 

Simon was sat as taut as a coiled spring. He let out a long breath. “Told you this was a bad idea. We’re going to bring the whole station down.” 

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just settling.” Ross winced as another creak rang out above them. He was used to the sounds the underwater stations made, but it didn’t mean they were any less disconcerting when they happened. “As I said before, I’d be a lot more worried if we were still alive.”

Simon gave him a look, optics peering out from the back of the sofa, trying to find him. “We could get a whole lot get deader. And flatter.”

“It’ll be fine.” 

Simon huffed, head slipping out of view as he sunk back into the cushions again - but not before swiping a remote control from the coffee table. It was still peppered with some empty glasses - a mug still partially stained brown with tea, one of many other hundreds of little things left behind. Simon mashed a few of the buttons on the remote, to no effect, the rumbling forgotten for the time being. “You have any DVDs or anything down here? I’m assuming you don’t get cable at the bottom of the ocean.”

Ross balked. “... DVDs?”

“... Yeah? Like, movies.” Simon turned to face him again - or, at least, the space he'd been when he'd last looked. “Hell, I’ll take a training video at this point.”

“Oh.” Ross shook his head. It was easy to forget how ancient Simon was. “No, we don’t… We don’t use those. Let me see if I can find you something else.” He turned to rummage through some of the nearly bare shelves. He could already tell there'd be nothing, but it'd give him something to fill the next few minutes with. 

"I can't believe I have 100 years worth of TV to catch up on," Simon's disembodied voice lamented, the man now sunk so far into the sofa that he'd all but disappeared from view.

“Trust me, you really haven’t missed much.”

“Huh. Guess everything really did go downhill after I died.” Ross saw Simon move in his peripheral, the TV suddenly flickering into life. He shivered at the strange, static buzz of a new electronic connection. “You know, I had to stop playing games or watching TV after the accident, or the stimuli could make my brain swell up." When Ross glanced over, Simon was sat up again, miming a head-explosion with his hands. "I couldn't even concentrate on comics or books properly. It drove me crazy missing out on everything like that.”

“Hate to disappoint you further, but unless you enjoy waiting room magazines, I think we’re out of luck.” Ross replied, momentarily distracted by a dusty stress ball. It was odd seeing what the Phi staff had prioritized when they’d shut down operations for good - perhaps they’d assumed coming back would always be an option. As he suspected, all the good stuff had been brought to Tau; having already sat through or read most of what entertainment was left in the abyss already, Ross could confidently say it was all a bit crap anyway. “That, and the books in the control room, if you wanted them.”

“Oh. Okay. That’s too bad.” Even without a moving face, Simon’s disappointment was palpable. “I guess I wouldn’t recognize any of it, anyway.”

“Sorry,” Ross tried. With nothing to fill the empty space between them, all that was left was the ever-daunting prospect of trying to talk to one another. He leant his head on one of the shelves, trying to remember if there was anything lurking in Phi’s internal servers. 

“Oh. Good news.”

“What?”

“We do have training videos.”

“Please don’t actually show me any of those.”

Ross mentally dismissed the files, coming back down to himself again. "Are you sure? They’re quite a treat.”

“Real sure - hey, uh, you gonna sit down? I didn’t realize you've just been lurking in the corner this whole time.”

Ross huffed. “I’m not… I’m not intentionally lurking.” Still, he acquiesced, deliberately placing himself as far from Simon as he could feasibly sit, on one of the seats pressed against one of the far walls. The relief of no longer having to stand was surprising - he supposed he was still flesh and blood, in some ways, though the feeling was shortlived. He wished he could switch his brain off somehow. Whenever there was a lapse in activity it was swiftly filled with the overwhelming feeling that he was wasting time. As much as he wanted to let himself appreciate the brief respite for what it was, it was impossible to not be acutely aware of everything going on elsewhere in the station; the carnage wouldn't just stop because they needed a break from it all.

Simon’s voice pulled him back. “You come here often?” 

"What?" Ross met Simon with a stare, unsure for a few moments what he was asking. He couldn’t figure out how Simon was so laissez-faire about the whole thing - perhaps he was just better at pushing the feeling away than he was. Ross drew his long legs up onto the sofa, and tried to push thoughts of the derelict station from his mind. "Oh, right. No. I had no real reason to go anywhere near the Space Gun, honestly, not when there was so much to be done in Alpha. This is a bit of a novelty.”

“That’s a funny definition.”

“Well, this is about as good as it gets down here.”

There’s another creak. Simon’s eyes locked onto the ceiling, as if challenging it to move again. “How the hell did you live with this?" Simon's gaze found him again. "This whole place fucking sucks, no offence.” 

“Non taken.” Even in its heyday, PATHOS-II was a little grim, but it was hard not to harbour residual affection for the place he’d spent several years of his life - and death - no matter how cold the surroundings felt. “It was a nicer with people in it. Living people, I mean - the background noise made it a lot less ominous.”

“Nicer to be trapped with friends, right?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Yeah. I guess you’d know.” Simon was still visibly tense as he tried to settle again. “I think I’m gonna take up your offer on the training videos. Not to actually watch, I… I just need some white noise, I think. This just going to making me nervous.”

Ross made a noise in agreement, going to find the footage again. "How did you deal with this before?"

"I kind of had bigger problems on my hands. Problems that were actively trying to kill me."

Ross felt stupid for asking. He couldn’t argue with the impulse, though - banal though the whole thing was, it was nice to take their minds off of the fact that they were both stranded at crush depth. With little effort, the television screen lit up again, emblazoned with the familiar scowl of Theta’s security operative. He wished he could recall the man's name. It was a shame that this was almost all they had left - it was an eternal cliché to regret not taking more photos and videos of your loved ones, but it was a profound one when all evidence of previous life were either destroyed, discarded, or corrupted beyond recognition.

"It's oddly fitting that all we have left down here are these insufferable corporate videos." Ross grumbled, mind drifting almost immediately. He'd already lost enough hours of his life to these. Insufferable though they were, they seemed to do the trick for Simon, the tension beginning to leech from his shoulders.

“What was it like when everything was still running?”

“Phi? I wouldn’t know, really.”

“Oh I mean more in general, I guess. PATHOS.”

“It… It was nice? Before the comet, obviously. I can only really speak for Tau and Alpha." The question is disarming, but Ross is grateful for the change in subject nonetheless. "It was more busy than anything, with the space gun so close. There was about… Eight of us, usually. Auclair, Chief Factor. Kovsky- ”

Ross continued through the list on autopilot. If he didn't know better he'd think it was a lifetime ago that he'd seen them all for the last time, though it was more jarring to remember that for most of them it had been less than a year since they perished; for the last survivors in Tau, it was feasible for Ross to have missed their passings by mere months or weeks. He found himself limping through the rest of the list.

“... And Sendeyo, the dispatcher.” He finished. Ross didn’t see what happened to Sendeyo during the evacuation, but he had heard enough of it. Their situation in the had always been dire, but seeing his colleagues torn to shreds made the apocalypse real in a way that sheltering at the bottom of the ocean didn't. It was funny. He’d never considered himself one of the crew before the comet. If anything, he'd actively avoided interfacing with many of them unless it was completely neccessary - but nothing brought humans together quite like shared trauma, it would seem, and slowly starving to death together 4000m below sea level was a good a bonding activity as any.

Ross realized with some confusion Simon was waiting for him to continue talking.

"Were you close?"

It felt strangely sacrilegious to answer that. He liked them, and they seemed - perhaps a naive hope of his - that they liked him too; his companions at Tau had never said anything, but he knew that they had to have blamed him for everything that had happened with the WAU. He felt responsible, either way.

"I think so," he answered anyway.

It was Simon’s turn to sound incredulous. “You think so?” 

"We could go back to Tau and ask, if you really want to know."

If he was too curt, it was too late to take it back. Simon looked about as close to mortified as a sentient Occu-Torch could manage, turning away to look at Strohmeier's - that had been his name - instead of him.

"Enough about PATHOS." Ross sighed. Time to try this again. "Where was home for you exactly, Simon?"

Simon latched onto the new topic eagerly. "Toronto. Most of my life, anway, before I died. Probably vaporized now like the rest of the surface."

“Maybe. The surface could look like anything, for all we know down here.”

"Yeah." Simon's shoulders sagged. "I dunno… I’m just not used to it. There's still a part of me that still thinks there's something to go back up to up there. Even after seeing the feed from the Curie... It looked unreal. Like something that only happens in a movie. ”

“You don’t get used to it.” Ross paused. “You’ve seen the surface? Photos?”

Simon nodded, grim. "It's just - it's just fire. Everything's burning."

"I see." That was what Ross expected to hear, but the confirmation stung nonetheless. "It's... Silly, but I can’t help wonder if anything at all survived up there, even if it's just a couple of plants, or a mouse - some kind of underground creature, perhaps." He tried not to think of the possibility of people too much - even on the slim chance there was human life, on some tiny pocket of the globe, the possibility of joining them had long passed him and Simon both. “It’s hardly the first time Earth's been hit with a comet. Things continued even then. They might still now.”

It was a horribly naive hope, he knew, and Simon’s silence on the matter was confirmation enough that that vision of Earth he held onto only existed in fantasy. The realization felt like neither relief, nor horror – only numbness, the same grim acceptance of the unshakeable fact that there was no way to go back to the Earth they'd loved before. Over time, even the Apocolypse had become a strangely mundane concept; in some ways, there was a closure to missing something that was gone forever, rather than something they could never return to. It occured to Ross that even with psuedo-time travel complicating things, his and Simon's circumstances had ended up nearly identical.

He had been impressed before at how upbeat Simon was, but the more quiet passed between them, the more sure he became that the other man was struggling for words as much as he was. Ross still knew barely anything about him. He was surprised how determined he felt to change that.

"You said before... You had a friend called Ashley," Ross started, approaching the topic on eggshells.

Simon sat up straight, and for a few seconds Ross was worried he'd stepped over another invisible boundary. This time, he was more than happy to be wrong.

“Oh, if you think the end of the world is bad, just wait until you hear about my bookshop.”

  
  
  


%%%

Ross awoke to the sound of footsteps. Distant, heavy.

  
  


The strange sounds continued as he listened in a peaceful haze, reluctant to move from where he'd settled. For a few moments, he wasn't quite sure where he was, and found that he didn't particularly care - with no confirmation, he could mentally fill in the gaps himself. There was a great many places he'd rather be.

He didn't recall falling asleep - the fact that he still could was news to him - nor where the previous conversation had ended, the edges blurred by tiredness and a lapse in memory. But what he did know was at some point, 2015 wasn't as far away as he'd thought it was before. He remembered snippets: Simon had been lucky enough to work in a bookshop with a group of close friends after graduating from University - a BA in English Literature, which came as little surprise. The crash had happened, seemingly, just as life was truly beginning - the same crash that taken Ashley's life and, eventually, his. The impersonal, one paragraph biography of a man who'd died too young that recalled was increasingly incongruent with the picture he was beginning to build; he remembered the hopeful inflection that still painted Simon's voice when he spoke of the scan, still somehow fond in spite of where it had ended up taking him. It had hardly been a week since he'd left that life behind.

Ross faintly wondered where the other man was, but he didn’t really want to move to find out. So long as his eyes were still closed, he could be anywhere else but PATHOS-II, at any other point in time, and in any other body.

There was a sudden clatter. Like someone had just dropped something heavy on the other side of the station.

  
  


Ross’ stiff limbs cried out in protest as he pushed himself into sitting, slowly unfolding himself from the almost cat-like position he’d slept in. He'd dreamt the noises, in all likelihood, but he felt compelled to check anyway - he'd believed the sounds of movement in Omicron were, until he found out he hadn't been as alone in the station as he thought.

  
  


This time Ross wasn’t alone, though - this time he had Simon.

  
  


He looked to his side, and his stomach dropped. Simon was exactly where he’d been before, sat unmoving. Ross bolted upright, straining to listen for anything else. The more he concentrated, the more the background ambience of the station seemed to drown out anything else, the gentle creaks and the high pitch whines of the electronics all equally indiscernible from sounds of movement or the natural crush of metal under kilometers of ocean. His search returned to the diving suit, still exactly where he’d been before. Ross was sure he’d just misheard - the only other person who could be walking around Phi was Simon. And Simon was completely motionless.

  
  


Motionless.

  
  


“Oh, fuck.” 

  
  


_The batteries,_ was Ross’ only thought as he clumsily scrabbled over the furniture to get a closer look. Though they were known for their long life, it was impossible to know how much power it took to keep Simon animated; before all they had to contend with was the internal atmosphere and heating, and some hydraulics to enable the wearer to withstand the Abyss. Whether it was enough to power an entire human consciousness - and then some - was another matter entirely.

  
  


The red lights of the Occu-Torch were dark. Alarmed, Ross leant in for a better look at Simon’s face - the closest thing he had to a face. He was close enough now that he felt a faint static on his skin, and a slight resistance in the air that seemed to warp ever so slightly when he moved in closer. 

  
  


It was then he saw it. Heard it, too - the mechanical whir of Simon’s optics bouncing around, as if in REM. Ross drew back, sitting on his haunches as he watched, transfixed and dumbfounded. His prior panic was beginning to feel very unearned, and very, very stupid. 

  
  


Simon was sleeping. 

  
  


Dreaming, even. He hadn’t thought that was possible for someone missing their entire head. Before Ross could think to nudge him awake, it turned out that his proximity alone had done the job for him. Realizing his carelessness, he leapt away as the red lights suddenly returned, and with them, Simon’s awareness. Ross hadn't realized just how worked up he'd gotten until the relief left him lightheaded - something about the thought of being left the last living thing on the station a second time that made his chest feel tight.

  
  


“... Were you asleep?”

  
  


“Huh?” Simon let out a groan as he sat upright. “Uh, I dunno. Maybe.” Ross listened to the way Simon’s optics moved from himself to around the room as he reorientated himself - now that Ross knew what the sound was, he couldn’t stop noticing it. Simon stretched up to the ceiling, warming up his stiff limbs again. “I… Was in my apartment, and all I had was tracer fluid in the fridge.”

  
  


Simon then paused, rubbing the back of his head. “Were you just staring at me?”

  
  


Ross felt like a deer in headlights. “... You looked dead.”

  
  


“No shit.” Simon’s hand pawed at his helmet’s visor, as if rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “I guess it’s not that weird. I thought I dreamt a while at Theta, but. Eh. I dunno, that was different.”

  
  


“Mhm.” For once Ross was grateful that there was no way for Simon to see how embarrassed he was. It was ridiculous, really, to worry about a dead man being dead. “You never really explained what happened in Theta,” he tried, a weak attempt to steer the conversation somewhere else.

  
  


Simon batted the topic away with the wave of a hand. “You probably don’t want to know. It was… It was really awful there. Forget it.” 

  
  


Given the station’s high population, he had no doubt the scene must’ve been an absolutely catastrophic sight. Ross couldn’t deny he was genuinely curious, though - Sarang was still stationed there, last he heard, the ultimate fate of him and his colleagues still a mystery. He could only assumed whatever killed Theta took him down with it. “It’s just odd you managed to sleep in a place like that.”

  
  


“I didn’t curl up and take a cat nap there, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  
  


“Knocked out, then?”

  
  


“Knocked out and embedded in fleshy goo. Can't say I reccomend it.

Ross decided that he didn’t want to know about Theta any more. “I'll cross Theta off my bucket list, then.”

Regardless, Simon continued. "In fairness, its not a complete write-off. It's fine until you go downstairs, if you're still interested in sight seeing."

"I'm really not." Ross said. "I can think of about a million other places I'd rather spend my final days."

Simon’s entire body stilled. It felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room, and Ross knew he’d messed up instantly. 

  
  


"Final." Simon parroted, voice sounding as though it was trapped somewhere in his chest, faint. "Why are you saying final?"

  
  


“Forget it." Ross said reflexively. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to have this particular conversation now - not when they’d just begun to mend the schism between them. 

  
  


“No.” 

  
  


The pair just stared at each other. Ross mentally searched for an explanation that would both end the conversation and sate Simon’s curiosity; he suspected such a thing didn’t exist. Not in this timeframe, the seconds ticking away feeling like an eternity. The truth would have to do. 

  
  


"I'm not going to last long once the WAU is dealt with." Ross said, bluntly. “As for you, you’re made of the structure gel we’re infecting it with. It… I predict the changes won’t have any effect on you, as you are now.”

  
  


“You can't be serious." Simon's hands dug into the fabric of the cushions, as if anchoring himself in place, clenching and uncleching as his breath quickened with rising panic. "You're telling me this now? No, no. Fuck no. You're not leaving me here by myself." He stood. The station creaked as if in protest, the metal moaning under the crush of the water above them. "That wasn't- that wasn't the plan. There's got to be a better way."

"I... I don't intend on leaving you on your own, Simon.” Ross fumbled his way to standing, taking a few steps towards the other man. This conversation wasn't supposed to happen yet - wasn't supposed to happen at all. Not until he'd figured out another approach, or a kinder way of explaining things - anything. Simon backpedalled, keeping the distance between them. He suddenly stopped, as if frozen, the realization leaving a palpable chill in the air as he caught what those words actually meant.

“Back then, in Alpha," Simon began, voice pulled taut like a cable about to snap. "You were going to kill me. That's what you were gonna do this whole time, wasn't it?”

  
  


Ross felt like he was folding in on himself, frantic for a way to escape the situation he'd created. “What is there here that you’re so desperate to stay for, Simon?" He hissed. "I’d be doing you a favour. If you’d just let me, I can put an end to this. I can put an end to-”

  
  


“A _favour_?”

"That's not-" Ross started, before thinking better of it. "Everything - everything that made life worth living is _gone_. I don't know where you're thinking of going from here, but like this? We're just going through the motions, Simon. There's nothing left. You must know that."

  
  


“Trying anyway counts for something, though, right?" Simon stared at him imploringly. Ross wanted to just sink into the floor and disappear. "It has to. Surely?”

Ross averted his eyes. “I just want this to be over, Simon. Please." It was difficult to look at Simon, even now still clinging to hope so stubbornly, and so horribly earnestly. He couldn't figure out what Simon still saw in the world that he didn't; there was no way to dress up their situation to make it easier to swallow, he realized. There was something unfair about the fact that the only chance for a good outcome had died months ago, well before Simon's arrival. "It’s not about me. Or you. It’s about the others - you've seen them too. And we can't keep them like that." Ross sucked in another breath he didn't need, savouring the mechanical exchange of dead air. "All the rest? It's just... It’s just a side effect. But it's what needs to be done. There's nothing we can do now but lay the human race to rest for good."

“What if I don’t want to put an end to it?” Simon said, though his voice no longer had any bite to it. He just sounded tired. Distantly, Ross noticed another noise, steps, closer than before now. If Simon heard it too, he gave no indictation, the man's posture loosening as he breathed a heavy sigh. As he turned away from him, Ross noticed for the first time that Catherine's cortex chip was missing from his omnitool holster. “... This really is the only reason you’re still here with me in Phi right now, isn’t it?”

  
“That’s not-” Ross spluttered. “That’s not fair.” He managed, eventually, feeling every bit as petulant and childish as he sounded. 

“True though, isn’t it?”

Watching the other man, Ross almost longed for Simon's anger to boil over; screaming and shouting would be more reassuring, somehow, than the grim resignation that now weighed down Simon's voice, all the worse with the knowledge that the final straw had been him alone. Any and all reponses died in his throat. He wasn't sure why this accusation stung the most, wasn't sure if he could answer it in a way either of them would believe - he'd only be confirming what the other man knew already regardless. “Please at least think about it.” He asked instead, barely hearing his own voice. "There's nothing left."

"I'm here." Simon sounded genuinely hurt. "We're both still here."

Ross said nothing. There was a sharp intake of breath from Simon, like the hiss of ignition before an explosion. It never came. “... It wasn’t all bad.” Simon whispered, sounding a million miles away. “The WAU did have some success. I mean, me, Catherine,” a hesitation. “You.”

  
  


“I know.”

  
  


“It just. It just feels so… Wrong. Thousands- _millions_ of years of growing and evolving, and it ends like this? A big ol’ space rock? A bunch of half dead people at the bottom of the ocean? That’s it?”

  
  


When Ross risked a glance back to Simon, the other man was sat on the arm of one of the sofas, unreachable. In some ways, collapse was inevitable, but a part of Ross wished that the illusion of companionship could’ve lasted just a little bit longer – he couldn't help but think that if circumstances were different, they really might've been friends. “I wouldn’t want this so badly if I didn’t think it was the kindest thing to do. Please trust me on at least that, if nothing else.” Ross said. He'd known all along it would come to this eventually, but there was a horrible finality in speaking it out loud - in naming it. “Think of it as if you’re switching off a life support.”

  
  


Simon’s body stiffened. “Yeah,” his voice came out tight - pained. The red lights of Simon’s optics darted for the exit, and for a few moments Ross thought he was about to bolt. Simon stopped short of the corridor after he got up, winding back and forth, the sounds of his boots reverberating against the metal floor of the room, frantic and indecisive. Ross watched him carefully, trying to figure out what nerve he'd hit.

It was a stupid question, but he asked anyway, “Are you okay?”

  
  


“Its-... It’s just a lot, okay? I just can’t believe this is it.” Simon stopped, sucking in a breath. “Look, Ross. Maybe we’ll find a way. You said there could be another way, right?”

  
  


“Could be,” Ross mumbled, non-committal. Simon had suffered enough false promises already; as much as he didn’t want to inadvertently send him on another fool's errand, chasing a future that didn't exist, he also couldn’t bring himself to extinguish any hope he still had.

“Well, it's not like we can make things any worse.”

“You're awfully optimistic, for a man that time travelled to the end of the world.”

Simon scoffed. “Someone's got to be.” He continued tracing small circles around the room was he walked around, though the nervous fervour had long burnt out into a slow amble. As he passed the entrance again, Simon stopped dead in the threshhold.

“Hey," Simon glanced over his shoulder to him. A horrible urgency painted his voice, winning over any lethargy that had dampened it just moments prior. "Were you out here earlier? Before I woke up?"

  
  


A wave of dread washed over him. “No?” Ross got up, joining Simon in the entrance. Huge globs of gel dripped from a gash in the metal casing of the ceiling – a newly burst pipe, bleeding out in long black trails that branched into thick cables that climbed over the walls like ivy, reaching out in every direction. The floor was thick with the stuff, painted black like an oil slick. Ross knew the WAU could grow quickly, and with no prior warning, but even if the reasoning was unclear, it never truly moved without purpose. Something had changed.

"You're sure about that." Simon said from his side; it was a statement, not a question. There was an unmistakable tremor in his voice as he spoke, gaze set on some spot in the distance. Ross' eyes traced the path up the corridor from where they both stood, past the gel pooling on the floor, to the spot Simon had become so heavily fixated on. A part of him already knew what was waiting at the end of it. It took a moment to realize fully what he was looking at, but once he noticed it he felt his stomach drop.

Smeared in the edge of the gel was the outline of a bootprint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks, thanks for your patience with this update, I wasn't expecting life to get in the way of this one as much as it did. This was originally going to be two separate chapters, but it felt more appropriate to smoosh them together so I hope that's not too jarring.
> 
> Thanks again to everyone who's left sweet comments, or kudos - they've really helped me get over a lot of the humps I've experienced writing this fic. Writing this is still so far out of my comfort zone, but I'm really hoping to be able to see this through to the end. Thanks again as always for reading, and see you next chapter!


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